Slag, in various forms and constituent compositions, is a voluminous by-product of the iron and steel making process. In particular, kish slag or de-sulf slag is a by-product of iron making which includes a relatively low content of iron along with a relatively high content of non-ferrous materials, including sulfur and silicates. Though current attempts to reclaim iron-rich constituents from slag, including grinding, screening and magnetic sortation, have been employed to isolate and recover some of the iron-rich content, steel mills are left with constantly growing stockpiles of the remaining fine particle iron and steel slag. These ever-growing piles of “fines” must be disposed of economically and in an environmentally safe manner.
Iron-bearing fines from various other similar manufacturing and reclamation sources, including iron blast furnace fines and steel fines, also include potentially valuable constituents for which to date an economical method of separating the valuable constituents from the aggregate has remained elusive.
It is thus desirable to develop further processing methods and systems to re-claim as much of the valuable content of these slag fines for productive use, as well as reduce the disposal costs for the remaining material.